Swimming Home

by Deborah Levy

  Kitty winked at Nina. First with her left eye. And then with her right eye. ‘The waitress isn’t used to ponies coming in for breakfast.’

  On cue the pony started to lick the sausages on the plate and all the children at the next table laughed.

  Kitty took a small sip of the doctor woman’s untouched coffee. Her eyes had stopped winking. ‘Actually’ – her knuckle suddenly turned white as she gripped the rope that was supposed to keep the pony on the trail – ‘she had me locked up.’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘I EMBARRASSED HER SO SHE CALLED AN AMBULANCE.’

  Kitty picked up the knife from the plate, a sharp knife, and waved it at Madeleine Sheridan’s throat. All the children in the café screamed, including Nina. She heard the old woman, her voice straining, telling her mother that Kitty was sick and unpredictable. Kitty was shaking her head and shouting at her.

  ‘You said you’d get my clothes. I waited for you. You’re a LIAR. I thought you were kind but they electrocuted me because of you. They did it THREE times. The nurse wanted to shave off some of my HAIR.’

  The point of her knife hovered a centimetre away from Madeleine Sheridan’s milky pearl necklace.

  ‘I want to go!’ Nina shouted at her mother, trying to keep her balance as the pony, its pointed ears now alert, jerked forward to find the bowl of sugar cubes.

  Isabel tried to undo the stirrups so Nina could get off the pony. The waitress was helping her with the buckles and Nina managed to swing her legs over the saddle but didn’t dare jump because the pony suddenly reared up.

  Someone in the café was calling the park keeper on the telephone.

  ‘THEY BURNED MY THOUGHTS TO MAKE THEM GO AWAY.’

  As she moved closer to Madeleine Sheridan, waving the knife at her stricken frozen face, two small white feathers caught in her hair drifted towards Nina, who was still struggling to get off the pony.

  ‘The doctors PEEPED at me through a spyhole. They forced MEAT down my throat. I tried to put on face cream but my jaws HURT from the shocks. I would rather DIE than have that done to me again.’

  Nina heard herself speak.

  ‘Kitty is going to drown herself.’

  It was as if she was the only person who could hear her own voice. She was saying important things but apparently not important enough.

  ‘Katherine is going to drown herself.’

  Even to her own ears it sounded like a whisper, but she thought the old woman doctor might have heard her all the same. Her mother had somehow managed to grab the knife out of Kitty’s hand and Nina heard Madeleine Sheridan’s wobbling voice say, ‘I must telephone the police. I’m going to call her mother. I must call her straight away.’ She stopped because Jurgen had suddenly arrived.

  It was as if Kitty had conjured him in her mind. He was talking to the park keeper, who was shaking his head and looked flustered.

  ‘I have witnesses.’ The pom-poms on Madeleine Sheridan’s red cape were jumping up and down as if they were the witnesses she referred to.

  Kitty grabbed Jurgen’s arm and hung on to him. ‘Don’t listen to Dr Sheridan. She’s obsessed with me. I don’t know why but she is. Ask Jurgen.’

  Jurgen’s sleepy eyes blinked behind his round spectacles.

  ‘Come on, Kitty Ket, I’ll take you home.’ He said something to Madeleine Sheridan in French and then put his arm around Kitty’s waist. They could hear his voice soothing her. ‘Forget forget Kitty Ket. We are all of us sick from pollution. We must take a nature cure.’

  Madeleine Sheridan’s eyes were burning like coal. Blue coal. She wanted to call the police. It was an attack. An assault. She looked like a matador that had been gored by the bull. The park keeper fiddled with a ring of keys strapped to his belt. The keys were almost as big as he was. He wanted to know where the young woman lived. What was her address? If Madame wanted him to call the police they would need this information. Isabel explained that Kitty had arrived five days ago with nowhere to stay and they had given her a room in their rented villa.

  He frowned over this information, tapping his keys with his tiny thumb. ‘But you must have asked her questions?’

  Isabel nodded. They had asked her questions. Jozef asked her what a leaf was. And a cotyledon.

  ‘I don’t think we need bother the police. It’s a private argument. Madame is shaken but not harmed.’

  Her voice was gentle and a little bit Welsh.

  The keeper was gesticulating now. ‘The young woman must have come from somewhere.’ He paused to nod to two men in muddy boots who seemed to need his permission to cut through a log with a circular saw.

  ‘Yes,’ Madeleine Sheridan snapped, ‘she came from a hospital in Kent, Great Britain.’ She tapped the assaulted pearls tied in a knot near her throat and turned to Isabel Jacobs. ‘I believe your husband is taking her out for a cocktail at the Negresco tomorrow.’

  FRIDAY

  On the Way to Where?

  People stopped to look at her. To gaze and gaze again at the vision of a radiant young woman in a green silk dress who seemed to be walking on air. The left strap of her white tap-dancing shoes had come undone, as if to help lift her above the cigarette butts and chocolate wrappers on the paving stones. Kitty Finch with her wealth of hair piled on top of her head was almost as tall as Joe Jacobs. As they strolled down the Promenade des Anglais in the silver light of the late afternoon, it was snowing seagulls on every rooftop in Nice. She had casually slung the short white feather cape across her shoulders, its satin ribbons tied in a loose knot round her neck. The feathers fluttered in the wind blowing from the sea, the Mediterranean, which, Joe mused, was the same col-our as the glittery blue kohl on her eyes.

  In the distance they could see the pink dome of the Hotel Negresco. He had respectfully changed into a pinstriped suit and even opened the new bottle of perfume sent to him from Zurich. His parfumier, the last alchemist living in the twentieth century, insisted the top notes were irrelevant and the deepest notes would present when he was perspiring. Kitty slipped her bare arm through his pinstriped arm, a vertical red stripe that was not unlike the centipede he had caught in the river. She did not tell him what had happened with Madeleine Sheridan (she and Jurgen had already discussed it for hours) and he did not tell her how he had found himself on his knees lighting one and then two candles at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral. The tension of waiting to meet each other again had made them do things they did not understand.

  By the time they arrived at the marble entrance, the porter in his crimson jacket and white gloves respectfully swung open the door for them, NEGRESCO printed across the arch of glass in gold letters. Her feather cape flew behind her like the wings of the swan they were plucked off. She did not so much stroll as glide into the low-lit bar with its faded red velvet armchairs and tapestries on the walls.

  ‘See those oil paintings of noblemen in their palace?’

  He looked up at the portraits of what appeared to be solemn pale aristocrats posing on chairs covered in tapestry in chilly marble rooms.

  ‘Yeah, well, my mother cleans their silver and washes their underpants.’

  ‘Is she a cleaner?’

  ‘Yeah. She used to clean the villa for Rita Dwighter. That’s how I get to stay free sometimes.’

  This confession made her blush but he had something to say in reply.

  ‘My mother was a cleaner too. I used to steal hen’s eggs for her and bring them home in my pockets.’

  They sat side by side on two antique chairs. The white feathers of her cape trembled when he whispered, ‘There’s a note to us on the table. I think it must be from Marie Antoinette.’

  Kitty reached over and picked up thewhite card propped against a vase of flowers.

  ‘It says the cocktail of the month is champagne with something called Crème de Fraise des Bois.’

  Joe nodded as if this information was of vital importance.

  ‘After the revolution everyone shall have the cocktail of the month. Shall we hav
e one now anyway?’

  Kitty nodded enthusiastically.

  The waiter was already at his side, taking his order as if it were a great privilege to do so. A bored musician in a stained white dinner jacket sat at the piano playing ‘Eleanor Rigby’ in the corner of the bar. She crossed her legs and waited for him to talk about her poem. Last night she saw something that scared her and she wanted to tell him about it. The boy was standing by her bed again. He was waving frantically like he was asking her to help him and he had two hen’s eggs in his pocket. He had broken into her mind. She had started to cover mirrors in case he appeared again. She slipped her hands under the bag on her lap so he wouldn’t see they were shaking.

  ‘Tell me more about your mother. Does she look like you?’

  ‘No, she’s obese. You could make the whole of me from one of her arms.’

  ‘You said she knows the owner of the villa?’

  ‘Yeah. Rita Dwighter.’

  ‘Say more about Rita and her portfolio of property and pain.’

  She did not want to talk about her mother’s boss. It was shrapnel in her arm, his indifference to the envelope she had pushed through his bedroom door. He kept changing the subject. She took a deep breath and smelt the clover in his perfume.

  ‘Rita owns so much property she has become a tax exile in Spain, but that means she can only be in the UK for a certain number of days a year. My mother told her she’ll be like someone on the run and Rita took offence and said her own shrink told her she must accept her greed.’

  He laughed and sank his fingers into the small bowl of nuts on the table. They clinked glasses and took their first sip of the cocktail of the month.

  ‘What is your favourite poem, Kitty?’

  ‘Do you mean a poem I’ve written or someone else’s?’ He must know by now that he was her favourite poet. That was why she was here. His words were inside her. She understood them before she read them. But he wouldn’t own up. He was always cheerful. So fucking cheerful, she thought he might be in terrible danger.

  ‘I mean do you like Walt Whitman or Byron or Keats or Sylvia Plath?’

  ‘Oh, right.’ She took another sip of her cocktail. ‘Well, there’s no competition. My favourite poem is by Apollinaire.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  She tipped her chair forward and grabbed the fountain pen he always clipped on to his shirt like a microphone.

  ‘Give me your hand.’

  When he placed his hand on her knee, his palm making a sweaty mark on her green silk dress, she jabbed the nib into his skin so hard he jumped. She was stronger than she looked, because she held his hand down and he couldn’t or didn’t want to tear it away. She was hurting him with his own pen as she inked a black tattoo of letters on his skin.

  I

  T

  S

  R

  A

  I

  N

  I

  N

  G

  He stared at his smarting hand. ‘Why do you like it so much?’

  She lifted the champagne flute up to her lips and stuck her tongue inside it, licking the last dregs of strawberry pulp.

  ‘Because it’s always raining.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yeah. You know it is.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘It’s always raining if you’re feeling sad.’

  The image of Kitty Finch in perpetual rain, walking in rain, sleeping in rain, shopping and swimming and collecting plants in rain, intrigued him. His hand was still on her knee. She had not put the lid back on his pen. He wanted to demand she return it to him but instead found himself offering her another cocktail. She was lost in thought. Sitting up very straight on the velvet armchair with his pen in her hand. The gold nib pointing to the ceiling. Small diamonds of sweat dripped down her long neck. He walked to the bar and leaned his elbows against the counter. Perhaps he should beg the staff to drive him home? It was impossible. It was an impossible flirtation with catastrophe, but it had already happened, it was happening. It had happened and it was happening again, but he must fight it to the end. He stared at the black rain she had inked on his hand and told himself it was there to soften his resolve to fight. She was clever. She knew what rain does. It softens hard things. He could see her searching her bag for something. She had a book in her hand, one of his own books, and she was underlining something on the page with his pen. Perhaps she was an extraordinary writer? It hadn’t occurred to him. Perhaps that is what she was?

  Joe ordered two more cocktails of the month. The barman told Monsieur he’d bring them over when they were ready but he did not want to walk back to his antique armchair yet. She was really quite knowledgeable about poetry. For a botanist. Why had he not told her he had read her poem? What was stopping him? Should he trust his instinct not to reveal he had read the threat she had slipped into the envelope? He carried the iced flutes over to her. This time Joe glugged back his strawberry champagne as if it was a pint of pale ale. He bent towards her lips, which were wet from the strawberry champagne, and kissed her. When she let him, he kissed her again, his black silver hair tangling with the curls of her red hair. Her pale eyelashes sooty with mascara fluttered against his cheek while he held her long neck in the palm of his hand and felt her painted green fingernails press into his knee.

  ‘We’re kissing in the rain.’ Her voice was hard and soft at the same time. Like the velvet armchairs. Like the black rain inked on his hand.

  Her eyes were squeezed tight shut. He was walking her towards the heavy Austrian chandelier in the lobby. Her head was spinning and she needed some water. She could hear him asking the Italian receptionist if there were vacancies for rooms. She opened her eyes. The sleek Italian pressed his fingers on the keyboard of his computer. Yes, there was a room. But it was decorated in the style of Louis XVI rather than art deco and it did not have a sea view. Joe handed over his credit card. The bellhop led them into a lift lined with mirrors. He wore white gloves on his hands. He was pressing buttons. She stared at the multiple reflections of Joe’s sweating arm around her waist, the green silk of her dress trembling as they sailed silently in the lift that smelt of leather to the third floor.

  Metaphors

  Madeleine Sheridan formally invited Isabel to Maison Rose. She gave her a glass of sherry and told her to make herself comfortable on the uncomfortable chaise longue. She sat herself down in the armchair opposite the journalist wife and delicately removed a few strands of silver hair from her glass of whisky. Her eyes were cloudy like the pool Kitty Finch had complained about to Jurgen and she thought she might be losing her sight. This made her all the more determined to help Isabel Jacobs see things clearly. To help her understand that being threatened with a knife was a serious business and strangely enough she experienced a sharp pain across her throat even though Kitty Finch had not in reality touched her throat. She was very much Dr Sheridan and not Madeleine when she explained that she had telephoned Kitty’s mother, who would be arriving early on Sunday morning. Mrs Finch would drive from the airport to the villa to collect her daughter and take her home. Isabel stared at her sandals.

  ‘You seem convinced she is very ill, Madeleine.’

  ‘Yes. Of course she is.’

  Every time Isabel spoke, Madeleine Sheridan reckoned it was as if she was reading the news. Her mission to help the exotic Jacobs family see things as they really are was on full alert.

  ‘Life is something she has to do but she doesn’t want to do it. Nina has told us as much.’

  Isabel sipped her sherry.

  ‘But Madeleine … it’s only a poem.’

  Dr Sheridan sighed. ‘The girl has always been a bit of a mess. But what a beauty, eh?’

  ‘She is very beautiful, yes.’ Isabel heard herself say this sentence awkwardly, as if she were scared of it.

  ‘If I may ask you, Isabel … why did you invite a stranger into your home?’

  Isabel shrugged as if the answer was entirely obvious.


  ‘She had nowhere to stay and we have more rooms than we need. I mean, who needs five bathrooms, Madeleine?’

  Madeleine Sheridan tried to look straight through Isabel Jacobs but what she saw, she had to admit, was a blur. Her own lips were moving. She was speaking to herself in French because the things she was saying were less suited to the English language. Her thoughts were making a hard noise against her lips, Kah, Kah, Kah, as if she was indeed obsessed with Kitty Finch, who, for some reason, was so adored by Jurgen and everyone else she managed to manipulate and intrigue. For the last three weeks she had observed the Jacobs family from the best seat in the theatre, the hidden chair on her balcony. Isabel Jacobs might have pushed Kitty Finch into her ridiculous husband’s arms, but it was a foolhardy thing to risk because she would lose her daughter. Yes. If her husband seduced the sick girl it would be impossible to return to life as it had been before. Isabel would have to ask her husband to leave the family house. Nina Jacobs, like an assassin, would have to choose which parent she could live without. Did Isabel not understand that her daughter had already adapted to life without her mother in it? Madeleine Sheridan tried to stop her lips from moving, because they said such unpleasant things. She could just about make out Isabel shifting on the chaise longue. Crossing her legs. Uncrossing her legs. The heat outside was so fierce she had switched on the ancient air-conditioning system. It groaned above her head. Madeleine could sense (although she could not see) that Isabel was a brave woman. When she was at medical school she had observed women train as heart specialists, gynaecologists, bone cancer consultants. Then they had children and something happened. They became tired. All the time. Madeleine Sheridan wanted this groomed, enigmatic woman sitting in her living room to fade, to be exhausted, to display some sort of vulnerability, to need her and above all to value this conversation.